Of Handcuffs and Horseshoes
by Ayaia of the Moon
Summary: a key. Rogue. Patience is a virtue. Sour Patch Kids. Suspicion. A bathroom stall. A Picnic. What do these things have in common? They are all elements in this story! Challenge issued by the brotherhood club on deviantart. And I kicked its butt! Go me!


Of Handcuffs and Horseshoes

-o-

_Try to think back,_ she thought irritably. Rogue had stabbed her wrist with that little screwdriver again. _How did I come to be in this situation?_

"Sorry," Rogue muttered, pulling at her gloves. "This is a lot more complicated than it looks."

Wanda Maximoff didn't say anything, just gritted her teeth as the little tools poked and bit into the skin on her wrist.

"Babykins, maybe –"

"No, Toad."

Ah, Toad. Yes, it was a suitable situation to blame Toad for. Toad Tolansky (his actual name was Todd, but no one called him such) was the reason Wanda Maximoff _had_ days like these. Days when she sat, not in class with her brother, learning about the Industrial Revolution for the 3rd week in a row, but in the handicap bathroom stall in the women's restroom, with none other than Toad himself, Fred Dukes, and Rogue of the 'x-men' for company.

"Ouch," Wanda hissed, as the tools found her wrist once more, instead of the damned handcuffs Rogue was supposed to be jimmying loose.

"This work would go by easier if y'all would let me concentrate," Rogue snapped before Wanda could make another comment about the pain in her wrist.

"Sweetums, if we could just –"

"Toad," Wanda said in warning, glaring at him. She never had to speak more than his name; he'd learned long ago when she was annoyed with him.

"Are you sure Fred couldn't get these off?" Rogue interjected, glaring at the pair of handcuffs; one cuff on Wanda's wrist, the other on Todd's.

"They're teeny," Fred Dukes whined, peering over the stall. (He couldn't fit into the stall with them, and had opted to scare away all the girls who tried to come in.) "I couldn't get a grip on the metal."

"That's Toad's special slick n' slime," Todd Tolansky, aka Toad said proudly. "Pietro couldn't get 'em off neither."

"_Toad_," Wanda growled again, sending him a withering look. Todd clammed up.

"Ah still don't get why y'all wanted _me_ to help," Rogue muttered, tucking white strands of hair behind her ear and wrinkling her nose in distaste as her gloves brushed against the bare sweaty skin of Todd's wrist and came away sporting a fine slick of slime.

"My woman would rather you than Boom-Boom," Todd answered quickly, ducking his head and avoiding the sharp smack that Wanda had aimed at him.

"What this parasite means to say," she growled, shooting him yet another glare before turning to face Rogue, "is that you were the best choice under the circumstances."

"Circumstances?" Rogue sighed, switching out a small screwdriver for a pair of pliers.

"Toad made the handcuffs himself," Fred explained, peering over the stall once more. "We thought you could get into his head and –"

Rogue looked up sharply, dropping the tools. "Ah ain't imprintin' him, if that's what you want."

"Well, you've had the most success of all of us at the boarding house," Wanda said, indicating the scratches Rogue had made in the stubborn metal of the handcuffs.

"How'd he get them on ya, Wanda?" Rogue asked, curious in spite of herself, settling back down and pulling at the handcuffs.

"Stupidity on my part, and ignored suspicion."

"Huh?"

"When Toad came down to breakfast, he was carrying this ugly backpack we'd never seen before," Fred explained. "The second he opened his mouth, Wanda jumped all over him, telling him he should give up trying to make her his girlfriend and that it would never work, but Toad just said he wanted her to pass the sugar." Fred paused to snicker a little. "We were all laughin' and Wanda was kinda embarrassed, but the second she passed him the sugar, he snapped the cuff on her wrist."

"I never should have let my guard down," Wanda muttered. "I knew he was a suspicious plotting worm, and I ignored it because I felt a little foolish."

"Well, why couldn't Lance or Pietro do this?" Rogue muttered, twisting at the metal with the pliers to no avail as Wanda cursed in protest.

"You're going to pull my hand off!" she snarled.

"Patience is a virtue, have you ever heard that? Ah'm tryin' the best Ah can, dammit," Rogue retaliated, throwing the pliers on the ground and digging in her pile for a different tool. "Ain't there a key, Toad?"

"I lost it," Toad said, looking away sheepishly.

"I'm hungry. How long have we been in here?" Fred whined, turning his attention back to the door, as if hoping that it would open and reveal some food that someone lost.

Rogue rolled her eyes, though she was smiling.

"When ain't you hungry, yo?" Todd snickered.

Wanda glared at him, and he remembered she didn't want him to speak. He was effectively silenced.

Fred, meanwhile, seemed somewhat embarrassed and had resorted to muttering under his breath about mutant hypoglycemia.

It was Rogue who pulled her purse over from the wall and started digging through it; Rogue who tossed an oddly-shaped package over the stall door where it bounced harmlessly off his head.

"What're these?" Fred said then, curiously opening the package and looking at the contents within, "Gummi bears?"

"Sour Patch kids," Rogue corrected him, cracking her fingers and hunching back over the cuff on Wanda's wrist.

Knowing that Fred's famous hunger wouldn't be abated by the snack, Wanda wordlessly tossed some gum at him.

"What's this?" Fred turned, and Wanda just glared at him.

"Eat it, or don't," she said bluntly, "It doesn't matter to me."

Fred grinned, looking surprised at the (sort of) nice gesture from Wanda. All eyes turned to Todd.

"What'd I do?" he said stubbornly, folding his arms, much to the displeasure of Wanda's wrist.

"TOAD!" she said, trying to pull her hand out from its sandwiched place between his ribs and arm.

"Sorry, pumpkin," he apologized immediately.

"Toad, d'ya have anything for Freddy t' eat?" Rogue asked stolidly, eyeing the backpack he had behind him.

"Nope! Unless he wants me to catch him a fly or somethin' Blob's on his own," Todd said decisively.

Rogue and Wanda looked suspiciously at him. (Fred was inhaling the sour patch kids)

"Toad, if you don't have food in that bag –" Wanda started slowly, eyes widening.

"What's in it?" Rogue finished. They looked at each other, nodded, and dove for it.

After much struggling, Rogue emerged victorious, opening the bag to find…

"Grass? Oh mah God, Toad is this drugs?!" Rogue shrieked, throwing the bag away from herself.

Wanda picked it up, sniffing the contents. "Not drugs…just grass," she said, though she seemed very confused.

"Why the hell d'ya have a backpack fulla grass? Rogue said bluntly. Todd offered up no answers, and Wanda upturned the backpack.

Aside from enough grass to stuff a small pillow, there was a checkered tablecloth, a little stereo, and, most inexplicably, a small jar containing a rabbit's foot keychain, a wishbone, assorted pennies and…was that a garter?

Rogue and Wanda looked up at him incredulously, expressions demanding explanation.

"What?" Todd said defensively. "Can't a Toad carry what he wants in his bag?"

"What is it all _for_, Toad?" Wanda said slowly, her voice angry.

"I thought we could have a picnic!" Todd said brightly, grinning. "I have music, and –"

"And a garter?" Rogue interrupted, crossing her arms and grinning as he came up with more feeble explanations to explain the random assortment of things in his backpack.

"Who has a garter? Woah…uh, Hi, Freddy."

"Kitty?" Rogue called, standing on the toilet seat and peering down at her.

It indeed was Kitty Pryde. "You know this is the, uh, Girl's bathroom, right Fred?" she asked, looking around in alarm.

"Kitty do you have any food?" Fred asked, looking hopefully at her purse.

"Just a sec, I might have some peppermints or something," she said, pulling her purse off of her shoulder and digging through it.

"See, sweetums? We have the tablecloth, the music –" Todd reached for the little stereo switching the radio function on and wincing as polka music filtered through the speakers "– and now Kitty brought us some food –"

"Are you guys, like, on a date?" Kitty asked, poking her head through the stall and grinning.

"I'm hungry," Fred reminded her, "And you're standing through my leg."

"Oh, sorry," Kitty said, straightening up and pulling a little container of tic-tacs out of her purse. "It's all I could find," she said diffidently, handing them to Fred.

"Have we missed lunch?" Fred asked hopefully, looking at the little orange tic-tacs with heavy doubt.

"No, we just got out for lunch. I came in to wash my hands," Kitty said, opening the stall, (when she hit Todd in the head Wanda smirked at her) and showing her hands to all present; they were covered in a cement-like paste that Wanda realized in horror was actually cookie-dough.

"Hey, Kitty," Rogue said then, grinning and standing up. "D'ya think you could phase Toad n' Wanda outta these handcuffs?"

"Oh my God, that's why you guys are in here?" Kitty started laughing, and looking at the tools and assorted things from Todd's backpack.

"What, did you think you could wish them out?" she said jokingly, holding up the wishbone and laughing harder.

"Wait, what?" Wanda asked, plucking the wishbone from Kitty and examining it.

"All this stuff is lucky," Kitty explained, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes. "rabbit's foot, lucky pennies, and a whole bunch of clovers?"

Rogue and Wanda looked at the grass, distinguishing, for the first time, the little clovers amongst the grass and roots. They looked at Toad, comprehension dawning.

"That's why –"

"Four-leaf clovers –"

"And the garter!"

"Wanda, Ah think these handcuffs are made outta horseshoes."

"He was negating my luck," Wanda said, her fist immediately glowing blue.

Todd screamed and tried to slide under the stall, which was, in essence, very stupid, considering he was still attached to Wanda's other wrist, and she wasn't to happy with being partially dragged along the dirty bathroom floor.

"Hey, you guys, no harm done, well, obviously besides two class periods that you'll never get back and being brutally attacked by this little screwdriver," Kitty said sensibly, phasing through the door, and pulling on Wanda, effectively stopping her from murdering Toad and phasing her through her handcuff.

Wanda flexed her wrist, smirking as she heard Toad hit the sink with a _thunk_ as his momentum carried him there.

"And hey," Kitty continued, shrugging, "Now that he's not attached to your wrist, you can kill him!"

Wanda opened the door of the stall, watching as Toad scampered out of the bathroom, and the subsequent shrieks of the girls in the hallway who saw him coming out of the girl's bathroom.

"Man, that guy'll stoop to any level," Rogue muttered, collecting her little tools and standing up, "Ah mean, think about how long that musta taken fer him t' work out."

Fred left next, to even louder shrieks, and Kitty and Rogue, being roommates, started chatting about random things, not even realizing Wanda wasn't behind them as they left the bathroom. She wordlessly stuffed the tablecloth and stereo into the dilapidated backpack and examining the jar of lucky items.

She wordlessly unscrewed the lid, extracting the rabbit's foot; it was white, with black patches on the toes, and the keychain had been spray-painted bright red. She pocketed it, stuffing the pennies and grass into the bag and slinging it over her shoulder. She had a half-formed notion in her head of returning the backpack to Toad at lunch, but shook her head, heading for her locker instead.

When Toad found his way home later that night, he was shocked to find the backpack on his bed, and he was so glad to have his things back, he didn't take notice of the rabbit's foot that remained conspicuously missing from the jar, and had attached itself mysteriously to the loop in Wanda's jeans the next day.

_After all, you can never be too careful_, she told herself. _Todd's wising up, and if he does some more intense thinking, I might fall for him in the end after all. Not that it's likely_.

She didn't register that for the first time she'd neglected to call him Toad, and that perhaps his plan hadn't failed as badly as he thought.

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Yay! I did this for the site thebrotherhoodclub . deviantart . com (without the spaces, of course) for the prompts listed for their fanfiction contest. Wish me luck!!

Ayaia of the Moon

EDIT: I realized I never did tell you guys! This story won that particular contest! Go me! :D


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